1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electro-optical device and, more particularly, to an electro-optical device which makes use of a liquid crystal as an optical modulating substance.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, unevenness in the gap between an upper substrate and a lower substrate of an electro-optical device seriously impairs the display performance of the device, because of the generation of interference colors. In order to avoid this problem, it has been proposed to disperse spherical or fibrous gap-controlling substances between the upper and lower substrates so as to make the gap between these substrates uniform. An electro-optical device having such gap-controlling substances is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,786.
This type of electro-optical device, however, suffers from the following disadvantage, particularly when it is used in a flexible panel or similar article which employs flexible substrates such as those made of plastic films, glass sheets of an extremely small thickness, e.g. 0.3 mm or less, or other sheet-like material which has a large surface area compared to its thickness. In such a panel, the liquid-crystal molecules placed between the substrates are often disordered or oscillated as a result of local distortion of the panel caused by, for example, pressure applied to the panel. This results in the quality of the display on the panel becoming seriously degraded due to optical modulation which takes place over a wide area around the pressed portion of the panel.